Today, the cancellation of WordCamp Boston 2020 was officially announced.
It was a really hard decision to make. I know that many people (including myself) look forward to the event every year. But, I fully believe it is the right decision to make.
In the announcement post, I provided a very detailed breakdown of the information that was monitored and used to make the final decision along with which parts of our planning process became difficult or impossible with current stay home related mandates.
From a planning perspective, the timing of our event is very difficult. Normally, a large majority of our planning activities happen during the months of April, May, and June. For example, our calls for speakers and sponsors were scheduled to be announced this week with speaker submissions being accepted through approximately May 1st. We also schedule our after party, speaker breakfast, and other necessary vendor services during these months.
With the large amount of uncertainty around the situation, applying to speak at an event with hundreds of people is not something that many people would consider doing at this time and it is unlikely that we would receive enough speaker applications to fill our schedule appropriately. Because we lean on local businesses for vendor services as much as possible and many are currently closed or operating in a limited fashion as they are financial and legally able to, it would be very difficult to schedule and arrange these parts of the event at this time.
WordPress Boston 2020 is Cancelled post
My hope is that by detailing the thought process we used to make our decision to cancel other organizers won’t feel so “alone” when faced with having to make the same choice. Part of the reason that I’m cross-posting here is to potentially get the cancellation post in front of more people.
Have you had to recently make a decision to cancel an event because of the COVID-19 pandemic? What information did you consider in your decision making process that is not listed in the cancellation post? What were the deciding factors for your decision?